History AwesomeButImpractical / WesternRPG

* In "VideoGame/NewHorizons", 1st rate-ships are floating fortress that's impervious to anything but forts and other 1st rates. They can obliterate anything smaller: nothing short but awesome. However, they need close to or over 1.000 crewmen to be controled without a performance suffering. It stuffs your entire hold with nothing but ammunition, gun powder and supplies to keep the men and cannons fed. Must already be rich just to pay the crew. Furthermore, repairs and ressources lost after every battle will be a huge drain on any fortune. They are a must-have for the biggest forts which may require a full fleet of them note, but other than that, a humble 3rd rate will do most jobs just as well with only a fraction of the costs.

In "VideoGame/NewHorizons", 1st rate-ships are floating fortress that's impervious to anything but forts and other 1st rates. They can obliterate anything smaller: nothing short but awesome. However, they need close to or over 1.000 crewmen to be controled without a performance suffering. It stuffs your entire hold with nothing but ammunition, gun powder and supplies to keep the men and cannons fed. Must already be rich just to pay the crew. Furthermore, repairs and ressources lost after every battle will be a huge drain on any fortune. They are a must-have for the biggest forts which may require a full fleet of them note, but other than that, a humble 3rd rate will do most jobs just as well with only a fraction of the costs.

** Triple-multiclassing. Having all the abilities of a Fighter/Mage/Thief or Fighter/Cleric/Thief sounds tempting, but you'll lag behind in levels almost immediately since you're splitting your 1/6 party experience share three ways. Pair that with an experience cap of 2.95 million and at best all of your classes will be in the low double digits - so you'll be stuck with a low [=THAC0=] (10 tops), lackluster thieving skills and never get to memory-cast any spells above Level 6. Even with Throne of Bhaal installed and an experience cap of 8 million, you'll never break the 20s in any class except Thief while the rest of your party will likely be well into the 30s. Unless you're doing some kind of solo run challenge it's much better to have a good single, dual or 2-multi class to fill a specific niche well rather than being consistently mediocre at everything.

** Triple-multiclassing. Having all the abilities of a Fighter/Mage/Thief or Fighter/Cleric/Thief sounds tempting, but you'll lag behind in levels almost immediately since you're splitting your 1/6 party experience share three ways. Pair that with an experience cap of 2.95 million and at best all of your classes will be in the low double digits - so you'll be stuck with a low [=THAC0=] (10 tops), lackluster thieving skills and never get to memory-cast any spells above Level 6. Even with Throne of Bhaal installed and an experience cap of 8 million, you'll never break the 20s in any class except Thief while the rest of your party will likely be well into the 30s. Much better to have a good single, dual or 2-multi class to fill a specific niche well rather than being consistently mediocre at everything.

** Triple-multiclassing. Having all the abilities of a Fighter/Mage/Thief or Fighter/Cleric/Thief sounds tempting, but you'll lag behind in levels almost immediately since you're splitting your 1/6 party experience share three ways. Pair that with an experience cap of 2.95 million and at best all of your classes will be in the low double digits - so you'll be stuck with a mediocre [=THAC0=] (10 tops), lackluster thieving skills and never get to memory-cast any spells above Level 6. Even with Throne of Bhaal installed and an experience cap of 8 million, you'll never break the 20s in any class except Thief while the rest of your party will likely be well into the 30s. Much better to have a good single, dual or 2-multi class to fill a specific niche rather than being consistently mediocre at everything.

*** Ironically the best option for a backstabbing class isn't a Thief at all, but rather the Stalker Ranger kit. Better [=THAC0=] and weapon proficiencies overall, plus they don't have to worry about managing their Thief skill points for other things since they only have Hide in Shadows/Move Silently. They can also dual to a Cleric to get the benefits of that class, though that limits them to Quarterstaves and Clubs for backstabbing (and the best backstabby weapon is a staff, so that works out well). The Shadowdancer kit in Enhanced Edition can also Hide without having to be out of sight at the cost of a lower damage multiplier and a small hit to spendable points (20 points per level vs 25); plus they can still Dual to bolster their [=THAC0=] and weapon proficiencies.

** Backstabbing. Sure its impressive to hit for triple digit damage and gib enemies doing it, but it takes a lot of faffing around with limited use invisibility items/spells or running completely out of enemy sightlines to Hide in Shadows, plus thieves' mediocre [=THAC0=] ensures you'll often miss anyway. Not to mention basically everything you'd want to backstab - you know, powerful critters like dragons, demons, most mages and basically every boss - are immune to backstabs and/or see right through invisibility anyway, even with Non-Detection active. Unless you want to run multiple Thieves, it's best to focus on the essential thieving skills (Find Traps , Open Locks and maybe Detect Illusion) in a multi/dual class setup and support in combat with much more reliable weapons (fighter/thief) or spells (mage/thief).
*** Ironically the best option for a backstabbing class isn't a Thief at all, but rather the Stalker Ranger kit. Better [=THAC0=] and weapon proficiencies overall, plus they don't have to worry about managing their Thief skill points for other things since they only have Hide in Shadows/Move Silently. They can also dual to a Cleric to get the benefits of that class, though that limits them to Quarterstaves and Clubs for backstabbing (and the best backstabby weapon is a staff, so that works out well). The Shadowdancer kit in Enhanced Edition can also Hide without having to be out of sight at the cost of a lower damage multiplier and a small hit to spendable points (20 points per level vs 25); plus they can still Dual to bolster their strengths.

*** Fallout 3's Sniper Rifle is an even more extreme version of the Scoped .44 Magnum, sporting fantastic range, power, accuracy and a high crit multiplier at the cost of having a rare ammo type and degrading extremely fast. It's second to none for picking off distant enemies, but a very costly investment if you want to snipe with any degree of regularity. (Its two unique variants -- Victory Rifle and Reservist's Rifle -- aren't much better than the base model either.) Most players opt to use a Hunting Rifle instead, which has much more common ammo, is far easier to repair and degrades much more slowly (and has two quite good unique variants in Ol' Painless and Lincoln's Repeater, though the latter uses relatively scarce .44 ammo).